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Cameron, Purao receive $100,000 grant from Lockheed Martin

March 15, 2012

Cameron, Purao receive $100,000 grant from Lockheed Martin

Brian Cameron, executive director of the Penn State Center for Enterprise Architecture (EA), and Sandeep Purao, associate professor of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) at the University, recently received $100,000 from Lockheed Martin, to conduct a maturity analysis on its enterprise architecture function. Cameron and Purao will assess the function with the aid of a groundbreaking new Enterprise Architecture Maturity tool they developed.

“We’ve had great initial interest in the uniqueness of this tool for measuring the maturity of the enterprise architecture function in organizations,” Cameron said.

The work that he and Purao are doing for Lockheed Martin -- a global security, aerospace and information technology company -- he added, is the first real project in which they are applying the tool.

The Center for Enterprise Architecture at the College of IST was established in 2011 and seeks to gather intellectual resources across Penn State to address research concerns and questions that span the design, functioning and governance of contemporary, information-driven enterprises. The Center is guided, in part, by an external advisory board consisting of representatives from leading corporations, government, and professional organizations. Lockheed Martin, which is headquartered in Bethesda, Md., and employs nearly 123,000 people worldwide, is a member of the Center’s advisory board.

According to Cameron and Purao, representatives from a division within Lockheed Martin approached them about conducting a maturity analysis on its enterprise architecture function. The model that Cameron and Purao developed, which is the first of its kind, assesses different levels of maturity within enterprise architecture, including the critical capabilities of the function. What is unique about the tool, they said, is that it allows companies to perform a maturity self-assessment that is not IT-centric, as is the norm, but rather is focused on business.

Cameron and Purao will conduct the maturity analysis for Lockheed Martin through fall 2012. While working on the project, they will look for ways in which they can improve the maturity model.

“It allows us to test and refine the tool so it can be useful to a large sector of industry,” Purao said.

The next stage of Cameron’s and Purao’s research, Cameron said, includes expanding the maturity model to develop a set of tools that could help organizations further analyze their areas of strength and weakness.